


Heaven Help Me Be a Man

by embroiderama



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Gen, Pre-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-01-19
Updated: 2010-01-19
Packaged: 2017-10-06 11:33:10
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,545
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/53230
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/embroiderama/pseuds/embroiderama
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Pre-series. Dean helps Bobby climb out of a hole.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Heaven Help Me Be a Man

**Author's Note:**

> This story was brought to life by the angry look Dean gives Bobby after he comments on the proliferation of liquor bottles in Bobby's house in LR. Parts of the story were also inspired by my memories of a story from another fandom--the XF Mulder/Skinner story [Therapy](http://us.geocities.com/michaelmouse.geo/JiM/Therapy.txt) by JiM. The story's not the same at all, but I'd feel wrong not admitting my long-time love of that story influenced this one. Thank you to [](http://writingpathways.livejournal.com/profile)[**writingpathways**](http://writingpathways.livejournal.com/) for the beta! The title is borrowed from Johnny Cash.

Hunters not answering their phones was never a good thing. Dean had heard his dad complain that he missed the old days when a man could go off on his own and not be considered missing the minute he didn't answer a call. And Dean got that, he did.

But he also knew what it was like to be the one waiting for a call, the one doing the missing.

John might have had a handful of bad things to say about Bobby Singer, but Dean knew the man was as reliable as the Impala, not a flaky bone in his body. When Bobby hadn't answered the phone or returned any of Dean's messages in a week, Dean decided it was time to tell the hunt to go screw itself and head up to South Dakota.

~~~

As soon as Dean turned off the road up Bobby's drive, he knew things didn't look right. The grass out front was growing high and wild, the land trying to turn itself back into a prairie or whatever the hell it had been before the edges of Sioux Falls pushed out this far. Bobby's old black dog came loping out from between two rows of cars with a rabbit limp in its jaws, long bunny ears flopping up and down as the dog ran toward the Impala. When Dean pulled up to park by the side-door where Bobby took customers for Singer Salvage, he saw the sign flipped to the side that read CLOSED.

Bobby's old Chevelle sat parked at the end of the driveway, and as much as he could have fixed up a hundred different cars into road-worthy condition, Dean had never seen Bobby out of town driving anything other than the Chevelle. The tow truck sat in front of a line of cars, dry grass blown up on the platform. The man was home, but it felt all wrong. Dean tucked a flask of holy water in his pocket and stepped out of the car with his gun held tight to his side, finger sitting lightly on the trigger.

Dean walked up the creaky steps to the back kitchen door and listened. All he could hear was the high hum of bugs in the tall grass and the dog whining behind him. Three sharp knocks on the door, and Dean called out, "Bobby!" Listened.

There was nothing, but then he heard noises from deep inside the house--a sharp crack of wood against wood, a heavy thud. "Bobby! Open the goddamn door!"

Nothing. Taking a deep breath, Dean stepped back and kicked the door. The first kick splintered the wood around the lock and the second sent the door swinging in until it banged against the refrigerator with a shuddering thud. "Bobby!" From the living room, Dean heard movement, a kind of rustling that sounded like panic, and he cocked his gun, held it out in front of him as he moved through the kitchen and cleared the doorway into the living room.

The first thing he saw was Bobby's battered old coffee table covered in cups and mugs and the empty couch behind it. Almost empty--the bundled up afghan had a leg leading from it down to the floor, and as he stepped closer Dean could see Bobby sprawled on his back between the two pieces of furniture. Bobby struggled up onto his elbows and glared at Dean for a wavering moment before dropping back to the floor.

"Fuckin' Winchesters. Lemmeafuckalone," he slurred.

Dean frowned and took a deep sniff of the air in the room--whiskey, spoiled milk, body odor. Dean put the safety back on his gun and tucked it into his waistband while he walked across the room. From the vantage point of standing between Bobby's left foot and the corner of the coffee table, Bobby was even less of a pretty sight than usual. Beard grown out and scraggly. No hat to cover up the way his hair was smashed flat on one side and tufted up like a clown's on the other. Shirt and sweatpants stained and wrinkled and about ready to walk out of the room on their own.

All of that could be taken care of with a shower and shave, but beyond that Dean could see even in the shadowy light of the room that Bobby's face was drawn--thinner than usual, tight around the eyes, skin not as gray as his beard but getting there. The ankle that was still up on the edge of the couch was swollen with a wound that didn't look like it was healing right and deep bruising shading purple into green. From the look of Bobby's leg and the number of cups on the table, not to mention the way the sour smell had settled into the room, Dean was getting a bad feeling about how long Bobby'd been there trying to let himself rot away.

Bobby coughed and then raised himself up on his elbows again. "Boy, if you ain't gonna leave, don't just stand there looking at me. I'm not a damned tourist attraction."

"Really?" Dean leaned down and wrapped his arms around Bobby's back, hoisting him up to sit sideways on the couch with his bad leg out in front of him. "I thought you were a stop on the Jack Daniels magical mystery tour."

"What're you trying to say?"

"Trying to say it stinks like drunk old man in here."

Bobby shook his head and reached down to feel under the couch until he snagged a bottle. He drew deep on the amber liquid and then looked straight at Dean. "Well, you may not be the Stanford genius, but nobody can say you're a dummy, boy."

The mention of Sam made Dean's stomach twist, and he felt his jaw tighten up. "Screw you." He turned around and walked back into the kitchen.

"Fine. Get outta here then. Don't let the door hit you on the ass."

Bobby's words followed him as he dug around in the mess on the kitchen counter until he found two prescription bottles--an antibiotic and an anti-inflammatory dated a week ago, both of them looking just about full. In the cabinet he found one clean glass turned on its side on the back of the shelf. Both bottles of pills and a glass full of water in hand, Dean walked back into the living room to see Bobby staring up at the ceiling.

"Thought you were leavin'."

"No such luck." Dean set the glass of water down on the crowded table and shook pills out of both bottles, handed them to Bobby. "Take them."

"What're you gonna do if I don't?"

"I don't know, pry your mouth open with a crowbar and drop them down your throat?"

"Like to see you try." Bobby glared up at Dean.

"Yeah, I'm really scared of you right now. Just take them."

"Fine." Bobby grabbed the pills out of Dean's hand and swallowed them down with a swig of whiskey. "Jackass."

"Bobby, dude, what the hell is wrong with you? Not answering your phone? I thought you were--" Dean felt anger surge inside himself at the prickle of tears behind his eyes. "Thought you were fucking dead or something."

Bobby snorted out a harsh laugh through his nose before echoing Dean's words back at him. "No such luck."

Dean didn't reply, just gathered up an armful of dirty cups and took them off to the kitchen. When he went back to get the collection of empty bottles, Bobby's eyes were closed, the lines on his face relaxed a little with sleep. Dean ran a sink of hot water and washed the dishes, forcing down his anger just enough to keep from breaking the glasses. A search of the fridge found little worth eating other than ketchup and some frozen hamburger, but at least there was food for the dog in the cabinet. Dean put out a bowl of food and filled up the dog's water bucket and looked around at the unkempt lot.

It wasn't like Bobby--none of it. Despite the time he spent researching and hunting, Bobby had kept up his salvage and repair business for years--decades as far as Dean knew. And he always had a mutt or two dogging his heels. Sure, they lived outside and could fend for themselves, but Bobby put food out for them every day just the same. Feeding the dogs had been Sammy's favorite chore, back before he started locking himself up with Bobby's books any time they visited. Nothing about the way Bobby had let things go felt right.

Dean shook his head, figuring he wasn't going to learn much until Bobby sobered up, and checked back inside to see Bobby still sleeping the sleep of the drunk and stupid.

He would keep.

The little grocery store down the road wasn't the best place ever, but Dean found enough to keep them for a few days. Bread, cheese, bacon, eggs, Chunky soups, coffee--food of the gods. The cool gods, he amended thinking about some of the mythology he'd had to wade through in high school, not the stuffy ones with their milk and honey girly shit. The only thing they didn't have in stock was cans of whoop-ass, but Dean figured he could supply plenty of that on his own. Bobby may not have been family, but he was close enough, and Dean didn't know how he was supposed to deal with another person gone from his life. Asshole could have called or something.

Back at the house, the dog greeted Dean again, panting with his big dumb face heading for the grocery bag until Dean lifted it out of reach. "Come on, I fed you already!" The dog just kept panting, looking up at Dean with an expression that made Dean want to give him Spaghettios. Damn it.

Inside, Dean loaded the cold stuff into the fridge and dumped a can of soup out into a bowl. As soon as it was set to spinning in the microwave, he went into the living room where Bobby still slept, his head slumped sideways against the back of the couch. "Hey!" Bobby didn't so much as twitch, so Dean kicked at the base of the sofa, jarring it an inch or so across the floor. "Hey!"

Bobby's head bounced down until his chin hit his chest, and then he opened his bleary eyes. "What now, boy?"

Dean snatched up the full glass of water from the coffee table. "Drink this before you croak of dehydration."

"How long you plan on telling me what to do?"

"Until you don't need me to anymore."

Bobby took the glass and Dean turned away, walked back to the kitchen to watch the soup bubble up around the edges behind a layer of yellow Plexiglas. When it was done, he put the hot bowl on a plate, grabbed a spoon and carried it all out to the living room. Bobby saw the food and looked away, his mouth going tight around the corners.

"Not really in the mood for eating."

"I'm getting the idea you've been a liquid diet for a while, yeah?"

"Maybe," Bobby mumbled.

"Then eat." Dean held the plate out, and after a breath Bobby took it. Dean watched him staring at it like the food might eat him and sighed. "Look, will you just...try?" Bobby picked up the spoon, and Dean figured he could at least not stare at the guy while he tried to get it down. "I'm gonna go bring in my bag."

The exhaustion of a long day driving straight through washed over Dean as he dragged his duffel inside. He thought about the beds upstairs, the ones he and Sammy had always slept in when they stayed over, thought about how stupid it would be to come all this way just to let Bobby choke on his own spew while Dean slept upstairs. He sighed and thought about the steepness of the stairs and how much it would suck to sleep on the hard wood floor versus how hard it would be to drag a mattress down the stairs. At least it was a twin bed.

When Dean dropped his bag in the living room, it looked like Bobby had the bowl close to one-quarter gone. By the time he'd moved the mattress down from the second floor and tossed down some pillows and blankets the bowl and plate were sitting on the coffee table. Over half full, but Bobby had his eyes closed, breathing too regular and controlled for sleep.

"I don't guess you feel like talking."

Bobby answered with a glare, a tiny shake of his head.

"Yeah, well, what's going to happen is I'm going to look at that foot of yours, make sure it doesn't rot off or whatever, and then I'm going to sleep. I drove across four states today trying to get to your drunk ass, and I'm tired."

Bobby sighed in a way that felt like 'sorry' to Dean. The first aid kit was right where it usually sat in the hall closet, and Bobby didn't protest when Dean sat on the end of the couch. The skin of his ankle was warm with infection but not too swollen. The scraped-up areas of skin looked bad; Dean swabbed them with alcohol, and it must have stung like hell but Bobby didn't so much as twitch. A layer of antibiotic ointment and some gauze to keep the goo from getting all over the place while Bobby slept and it was as good as Dean could get it.

As Dean stood up, Bobby pulled the afghan up over himself and Dean saw the half-full bottle he had tucked next to himself. Dean just shook his head and walked over to turn off the light. He wasn't in the business of telling anybody what they could and couldn't drink, but he really hoped he could get some sense out of Bobby before the man entirely pickled his liver. In the dark, Dean made his way to the mattress on the other side of the living room and crashed down, not much caring that his feet hung over the edge and rested on the floor. The springs in the sofa groaned as Bobby turned over. Dean closed his eyes, feeling sleep very close. The word that followed him into sleep was quiet, gruff and half-muffled by crocheted yarn.

"Thanks."

~~~

Bacon and coffee.

When it came to things Bobby liked to smell first thing in the morning, those two were right up there at the top. Still, he wasn't looking forward to getting up and facing Dean and the whole rest of the goddamn day, so he turned over, glad enough to let the back of the couch block out the light of day for a while. The light seeping through Bobby's eyelids felt like far too much to bear, and as good as the food smelled in the abstract--when it came right down to it he wasn't much hungry. The upholstery in front of his face felt damp. Damp and--_fuck it all._

The fabric stank of whiskey, burning through Bobby's nostrils straight down to his gut. He struggled to sit up, bumping his elbow on a bottle, and pushed himself off the couch in the direction of the bathroom. The ankle hurt like hell and wanted to give out on him, but the pain was better than hurling on the floor.

Bent over, one hand on the wall behind the tank, he breathed in the stale smell of the water in the toilet bowl while his stomach tensed and shivered. After a couple minutes of nothing happening, Bobby pushed himself up straight and shuffled over to stand in front of the sink. Not like he was used to seeing something pretty in the mirror, but what looked back at him right then was worse than usual. Lines that looked more like his pop's face, brittle-looking bags beneath his eyes, pale brown stains overlapping on his shirt.

Smells like drunk old man. Looks like drunk old man. Bobby figured that particular shoe fit pretty well. Only way he knew to dull the sting of that bite was a breakfast made out of less coffee and more Irish.

Out in the kitchen, Bobby squinted against the light coming through the windows. He didn't remember leaving those curtains open--didn't remember the windows being clean enough to let in that much light in a damned long time. When he could see something other than burning squares of sunshine, Bobby spotted Dean sitting at the table, shoveling food in his face like John Winchester had told him to finish up in three minutes flat.

Come to think of it, Bobby didn't remember seeing much of anything the last time he looked in the ice box. "Where'd you find food?"

Dean looked up, face flat and blank. "Awesome place called the store."

"Good for you."

"Made up another plate if you want it." Dean poked his fork toward the counter. "In the oven."

Bobby wandered over to the counter and blinked, trying to figure out what was wrong with the picture. The bottles--all of the bottles were gone. Bobby wrapped his hands tight around the lip of the counter and talked to the wall. "You had no right to come here and take my liquor, boy."

"I didn't." Dean sighed.

"Then where the hell are my bottles?"

"Trash."

"GodDAMNit!"

"You idiot," Dean bit out, "they were all empty."

Bobby turned around to look at Dean. He could always tell if that boy was spinning a yarn, but his eyes said it was the truth. The whole case of whiskey was gone, and Bobby'd spilled the last of it on his own sorry self during the night. He sat down at the table and put his head down in his hands. "Fuck."

He listened to Dean's chair scrape across the floor, footsteps crossing the room, the metallic shriek and clank of the oven door opening and closing, a plate landing on the table between his elbows. "There's your breakfast if you want it. I'm gonna go change the oil in the Impala. If you plan on coming outside you might want to think about taking a shower unless you want to kill that poor dog of yours with your stink." Footsteps again, and then the screen door slammed closed behind Dean and the frame shuddered in his wake.

As much as he knew Dean could cook up a mean breakfast, the food tasted like shit--eggs not quite warm anymore, bacon too strong and salty on the back of his tongue. But there was still coffee in the pot, and when Bobby managed to get himself up and over to fetch some, everything tasted a little better washed down with the bitter drink. Either that or--hot and strong as it was--not enough taste buds survived to tell his brain what the food tasted like.

The trip up the stairs wasn't fun, but Bobby was glad Dean hadn't seen fit to stick around and help him. He didn't need a witness to his slow trek--back cramping from too many days and nights on the couch, foot sore and throbbing with every step. At least the shower was worth it, hot water loosening up his muscles and washing away the grime that'd had his skin itching. When he stepped out of the shower, nose full of soap and shampoo and shaving cream, the reek of the pile of dirty clothes and bandages in the corner hit him the way it must have hit Dean.

Annie would have hated seeing the house like that.

Bobby wiped a hand over the fogged-up mirror and tried to see himself the way she would have seen him. She would have kicked his ass good if she'd found him like this, neck-deep in liquor and self-pity. Bobby ducked his head and looked at the blue marbled sink she had picked out. Trouble was, he never would have needed to lose himself this way if she'd never left him, swallowed up by an evil he wasn't quick enough to understand.

If there really was some kind of heaven that would let her look down on him, he hoped she forgave him, hoped she understood what missing a woman for a quarter century could do to a man.

~~~

Dean was in the middle of cleaning road dust off his girl's undercarriage when he heard the flat slap of Bobby's front door. He rolled out from under the car and stood up, stretching out his back and wondering if Bobby was on his way out to the liquor store or what. From the looks of him, sitting on the front porch with only socks on his feet, it didn't look like he was heading anywhere. Without shoes, ten steps in any given direction on this lot would probably land you in the ER needing a tetanus shot and stitches. As Dean walked closer, he could smell that Bobby had taken a shower, and he looked a hell of a lot better.

His eyes were bleary with a hungover haze but far clearer than they'd been the night before. Not glassy with fever either, which bode well for the state of his foot.

"You took your pills?"

"Funny you don't look a thing like my mother."

Dean sat on the porch next to Bobby and brushed some dirt off his boots. "I hope that's a yes."

"Yes," Bobby ground out, shaking his head. They sat for a few minutes in the quiet of the early afternoon until Bobby nodded in the direction of the Impala. "You got her ready to go?"

"Yeah." Dean paused, scratching at a loose thread on the knee of his jeans. "Well, I was hoping to hang out for a few days if you don't mind. Kinda tired of motels, you know?"

"Dean Winchester sick of traveling around? That right?"

Dean looked over through the corner of his eye and saw Bobby squinting at him, his whole face calling bullshit. "Stranger things've been known to happen."

"Now and then, yeah." With a quiet groan Bobby pushed himself up to his feet and stood with one hand bracing himself on the porch railing. "But I ain't helping you move that bed back upstairs."

Dean watched Bobby walk back inside and felt something in his gut relax knowing that Bobby would let him stay. The man could be proud as hell, and Dean hadn't wanted to be run off the property the way his father had been, Bobby's frustration with whatever had happened---not that anybody was willing to tell Dean what it was---boiling over into the kind of shouting match that ended a friendship. He wasn't going to press like some kind of social worker, wasn't going to ask Bobby why he suddenly decided to drink his way through six months worth of liquor in a week, but it didn't feel right to leave yet either.

Bobby already seemed more like himself, the capable, no bullshit hunter who never lost his concentration on a job. Seeing him lying on the floor soaked in whiskey didn't sit right, didn't make sense, and until Dean had some clue what had got this ball rolling so far downhill he wasn't ready to take off.

Didn't hurt to spend some time pampering his baby either.

~~~

Bobby looked up from the book he was studying and watched Dean for a minute, letting the tangle of Latin loosen in his head. He cleaned his weapons like a soldier, better than too many of the men Bobby had served with back in the day. Hell, at twenty-five he was older than most of them. Dean worked steadily, rhythmically, his face blank and calm as a man doing martial arts, and Bobby could almost see him sitting on the floor, helping his brother build a tower out of scuffed up old Lincoln logs.

Three days dry, and Bobby felt sick that he'd needed that boy to save him from sinking down in a hole too deep to see out of. Three days, and he could feel Dean itching to move on.

"Don't you want to know?"

Dean's hands stilled at the words, and he looked over at Bobby. "Know what?"

"My middle name. What do you think?"

"Oh." Dean shrugged, pistol parts still in his hands. "Figured it was none of my business."

"It ain't, but I'll tell you anyway." The words had been welling up in Bobby since Dean had come and snapped him out of his haze of grief and forgetting, and he knew talking couldn't make him look like any more of an old fool that he'd already proved himself to be.

"Okay." Dean put the parts he was working on down on the table but didn't move to sit closer.

"Hurting my ankle was just stupid. Caught it in some barbed wire when I was hunting out east of here. Got it checked out, got the pills and orders to stay off of it for a couple of days." He picked up one of the bottles from the table next to him and shook the remaining pills inside. "Then I looked at the date on them. I'd lost track of time. I mean, I look at the calendar when I need the date to put on a service order or a check, but I never really think about it. But right there in front of me printed above my name--twenty-five years exactly. Twenty-five years to the day."

"Yeah?"

"Since my wife died." Bobby breathed in the silence surrounding the words. "Annie."

"Man. I'm sorry, Bobby."

"Your old man tell you what happened?" Memories flashed--the knife in his hand, the black in her eyes--and Bobby didn't think he could take telling the story out loud.

"He told me." Dean's voice was gentle, but Bobby didn't look, didn't want to see the sympathy on the boy's face.

"You planning on heading out soon?"

"My dad called. Got a job he wants me to work with him in Oklahoma, but I--"

"You go on. I ain't planning on crawling back in the bottle. Don't think I'll be able to stand the taste of whiskey for a month."

"Only a month?"

Bobby looked up to see Dean smirking at him over the weapon he was reassembling. "You leaving in the morning?"

"I guess I better."

Bobby watched as Dean continued to work, his fingers nimble at the task his father had taught him.

In the morning, Bobby watched him pack up the car. Dean smiled wide when he saw the case of high test motor oil Bobby'd slipped into the back seat. The boy knew a _thank you_ when he saw it, and he clapped his hand tight on Bobby's shoulder before sliding into the driver's seat. The Impala's engine hummed smoother than it had ten years ago, and Bobby hoped John was proud.

_Any man would be proud to have a son like that_, Bobby thought as he turned to walk back into the house. _Any man._


End file.
